I have thought about that. But at the same time, our personal cooldowns blow away those of a DPS warrior. Touch of Karma, Dampen Harm/Spell Diffusion, Fortifying Brew, Zen Meditation. Warriors have raid CDs but almost nonexistant personal CDs. Shield Wall is like Zen Meditation in that it gimps their damage (pretty sure they recently changed it to require keeping your shield out), but it only gives them a 40% reduction instead of 90%. Die by the Sword doesn't help 90% of the time.

It's not even a matter of survival - obviously I survive quite well, but A) our mistweaver wants to go windwalker, and being that they've been around longer (and their WW gear is almost exactly like mine, thus our damage is comparable) they are to receive the spot. Plus, our healing team is rather top-notch, so unless that person were bad at mechanics (which would mean they wouldn't be in our raid for very long) personal CDs isn't going to be a make-or-break.

The other classes you mention do have a cleave - which in a fight such as Garalon, is hard to give up. I've volunteered to be sat during Garalon thus far simply because of my lack of cleave - it just makes more sense to bring in the extra DK or rogue. I still don't have a kill on that, either (on heroic) - so finding a raid with comparable progression and explaining why I'm 6/16 HM instead of 7/16 like the rest of my guild is a bit hard to explain. Not that I've tried to find a new one, mind you, but not many are particularly looking for Windwalkers (or tanks), and I've not much interest in going mistweaver (I already healed for 6 years, and found that it just isn't my cup of tea)

That's actually rather strange. It's common knowledge that any stacking buff is cleared when pulling a normal/heroic raid boss in current tiers. There's even been a topic shot down with that very fact when someone was suggesting using the portable turnip punching bag to build stacks before a pull.

I've watched my stacks drop when pulling Feng and Dogs several times.

Soothing Mist:"Healing them for a minor amount every 0.5 sec, until you take any other action."Jade Serpent Statue: "The statue will also begin casting Soothing Mist on your target. healing for 50% as much as yours. " [What's half of minor?]
"Statue casts Soothing Mist at a nearby ally for toddler healing."

That's actually rather strange. It's common knowledge that any stacking buff is cleared when pulling a normal/heroic raid boss in current tiers. There's even been a topic shot down with that very fact when someone was suggesting using the portable turnip punching bag to build stacks before a pull.

I've watched my stacks drop when pulling Feng and Dogs several times.

A quick bandaid fix in my opinion is adding a percentage increase to the debuff from rising sun kick via mastery. it would work and would make mastery a semi decent stat.

That's actually rather strange. It's common knowledge that any stacking buff is cleared when pulling a normal/heroic raid boss in current tiers. There's even been a topic shot down with that very fact when someone was suggesting using the portable turnip punching bag to build stacks before a pull.

I've watched my stacks drop when pulling Feng and Dogs several times.

That's why you use it BEFORE the pull. It'll clear if you don't use it before the boss is aggroed, if you use it before, it stays.

That's why you use it BEFORE the pull. It'll clear if you don't use it before the boss is aggroed, if you use it before, it stays.

Oh, hold up, now I get what you mean. You're talking about drinking then pulling not saving stacks. Okay, same wavelength now.

Soothing Mist:"Healing them for a minor amount every 0.5 sec, until you take any other action."Jade Serpent Statue: "The statue will also begin casting Soothing Mist on your target. healing for 50% as much as yours. " [What's half of minor?]
"Statue casts Soothing Mist at a nearby ally for toddler healing."

I have thought about that. But at the same time, our personal cooldowns blow away those of a DPS warrior. Touch of Karma, Dampen Harm/Spell Diffusion, Fortifying Brew, Zen Meditation. Warriors have raid CDs but almost nonexistant personal CDs. Shield Wall is like Zen Meditation in that it gimps their damage (pretty sure they recently changed it to require keeping your shield out), but it only gives them a 40% reduction instead of 90%. Die by the Sword doesn't help 90% of the time.

I don't have a problem with not having raid utility since half of the DPS specs don't as long as we have strong personals. However, if we're going to be treated like a pure DPS with no hybrid raid utility, we should probably have a real cleave. Some kind of noticeable DPS increase against 2-3 targets would be nice.

Apparently Demonic Gateways, Gorefiend's Grasp, and the various tools Hunters and Mages have to cheese mechanics or gain ridiculous DPS for certain fights aren't raid utilities. Or Ancestral Guidance, Vampiric Embrace, or Hand spells. No, I outlined what every single class has that helps the raid.

Personal damage reduction is not nearly on the same level of usefulness as full immunity or Cheat Death/Purgatory. It will not save you unless you can see the damage coming, at which point you should have avoided it anyways. My raid doesn't care if I can stand in fire purposefully and not die, everyone else can move out without cooldowns so it's not exactly helping the raid except for a minor DPS gain on uptime. Unless you mean that it helps in terms of healing reduction, in which case I laugh at that notion because every class either has passive self-healing or damage reduction that does the same thing. Windwalkers just have to press the buttons instead of having it done automatically.

However, if we're going to be treated like a pure DPS with no hybrid raid utility, we should probably have a real cleave. Some kind of noticeable DPS increase against 2-3 targets would be nice.

Honestly, if Rising Sun Kick hit three targets for the same damage (I think there's a Protection Warrior ability that does that but 50% reduction?) then we'd be set. FoF not being divided by targets from rather having a damage reduction per number of targets added so that it'd end up about the same as Spinning Crane Kick again five when you hit six targets would be nice. (essentially making it useless at the point that SCK would step in at the AOE softcap)

Last edited by TheWindWalker; 2012-12-13 at 05:40 AM.
Reason: correction

Soothing Mist:"Healing them for a minor amount every 0.5 sec, until you take any other action."Jade Serpent Statue: "The statue will also begin casting Soothing Mist on your target. healing for 50% as much as yours. " [What's half of minor?]
"Statue casts Soothing Mist at a nearby ally for toddler healing."

Apparently Demonic Gateways, Gorefiend's Grasp, and the various tools Hunters and Mages have to cheese mechanics or gain ridiculous DPS for certain fights aren't raid utilities. Or Ancestral Guidance, Vampiric Embrace, or Hand spells. No, I outlined what every single class has that helps the raid.

Personal damage reduction is not nearly on the same level of usefulness as full immunity or Cheat Death/Purgatory. It will not save you unless you can see the damage coming, at which point you should have avoided it anyways. My raid doesn't care if I can stand in fire purposefully and not die, everyone else can move out without cooldowns so it's not exactly helping the raid except for a minor DPS gain on uptime. Unless you mean that it helps in terms of healing reduction, in which case I laugh at that notion because every class either has passive self-healing or damage reduction that does the same thing. Windwalkers just have to press the buttons instead of having it done automatically.

Every class has their tools. Most tools are useless the majority of fights. You rarely need to stack them to the point that you're bringing the class instead of the player.

We have instant CC (Paralysis) which is useful on some fights (Wind Lord, Lei Shi). We can soak damage with a Dispersion-like ability (Elegon). Leg Sweep is pretty useful as most DPS do not have their stuns in PVE (Feng adds, Elegon adds, Emperor's Will Rages, Vizier MCs).

I won't say we have the best utility, but we're not the worst. Consider rogues for example. I don't think that they have much real utility. Tricks is the only thing that I've seen them use and it's pretty much never required, it's just nice to have. I've haven't heard the phrase "we should get some more rogues in here for some additional utility" this tier.

Lol Paralysis being useful in a raid environment, you're funny. And blatantly ignoring the fact that half of the classes in the game can either talent into an AoE stun (Warlocks, DKs, Warriors, Monks, Mages) or have it passively (Shamans). Diffuse magic is nice for one fight, as a melee that needs to go all the way out, hooray. Too bad pretty much anyone can do it, the only difference being Monks not needing 100 or 200k healing.

You bring Rogues for Blade Flurry, like I've said multiple times now. They are exceedingly good at cleave. Tricks is nice, like Diffuse Magic is nice, but it's not something you bring a class for. Windwalker does not have something unique, whether it's a spec-specific ability or a raid-wide Monk ability, there is nothing Windwalkers have to make them special. Every other class or spec in the game does have something, and I listed it, so unless you can think of something unique that WW has or one of my examples that was wrong, what I said will remain true.

I think part of the reason monks don't feel very unique is that there are just a ton of melee specs in the game already: Warrior (x2), Paladin, DK (x2), Enh Shaman, Rogue (x3), Feral Druid... So that's 6 classes (out of 10) and 10 specs (out of 33) which are already doing the same thing. Mistweaver and Brewmaster feel more unique, because they expand a more limited playing field (4 classes/specs to 5 and 4 classes/5 specs to 5/6). (Arguably, a new caster DPS might have been more interesting, since while there are more caster DPS specs (12 out of 33), 9 of those are the Hunter/Mage/Warlock pure class specs, but I don't think anyone can argue that Monks fits more thematically with MoP and that a Monk class without a melee martial arts DPS spec would be strange).

Mistweaver and Brewmaster feel more unique, because they expand a more limited playing field (4 classes/specs to 5 and 4 classes/5 specs to 5/6).

If it was about what felt more fun to play this would make sense, but pretty much everyone in this thread is talking about mechanics. It's not about being the new class, this situation has happened before with other specs. For example, Resto Shaman in the beginning of Cataclysm. No healing cooldowns, no raid cooldowns, no specific utility or being particularly good at any one thing, then they got Spirit Link Totem as a way to not be the spec that brings nothing. Now, Windwalker is the spec that brings nothing new. Mages would arguably be in the same boat if they didn't just have flat out better DPS than most specs. This would be a problem if it was any spec in the game, being a new class really doesn't have anything to do with it.

If it was about what felt more fun to play this would make sense, but pretty much everyone in this thread is talking about mechanics. It's not about being the new class, this situation has happened before with other specs. For example, Resto Shaman in the beginning of Cataclysm. No healing cooldowns, no raid cooldowns, no specific utility or being particularly good at any one thing, then they got Spirit Link Totem as a way to not be the spec that brings nothing. Now, Windwalker is the spec that brings nothing new. Mages would arguably be in the same boat if they didn't just have flat out better DPS than most specs. This would be a problem if it was any spec in the game, being a new class really doesn't have anything to do with it.

This is twice now you've brought up the "bring something new or unique to justify a raid spot" banner and not to be rude but you really need to get away from that thinking.

Blizzard has been pretty darn explicit about their "bring the player, not the class" way of thinking and for the most part they've achieved that. At the highest levels of play I've not heard of monks being sat or told they'd have to be sat and no class is a huge outlier in DPS that people are stacking them - though part of that has to do with the drop in 25-man raiding - and neither are people stacking specific classes or demanding at least of one class because of the abilities they bring to the raid.

What Monks deliver is strong consistent DPS, they are a slightly more complicated class to play with two buffs to keep up - tiger power and strikes - and while they may lack in big boom AoE they make up for it with consistent spammable AoE that can be improved with a talent. WWalkers play smoothly, have a rather interesting priority rotation and have excellent mobility.

So rather than asking for a unique buff to justify your raid spot you're better off fine tuning your priorities and buff uptimes and tailoring to each fight to play to your strengths.

This is twice now you've brought up the "bring something new or unique to justify a raid spot" banner and not to be rude but you really need to get away from that thinking.

Blizzard has been pretty darn explicit about their "bring the player, not the class" way of thinking and for the most part they've achieved that.

He's not speaking out of personal preference. Take a stroll through the Raid subforum and look at how raid spots are assigned and which classes are sat and why. Windwalker is undesirable when there are more people than raid spaces available when most other DPS classes can keep up with us and bring uniqueness with them. Blizzard dug this hole too deep back in Vanilla and hasn't stopped going down it even with the hopeful words.

neither are people stacking specific classes or demanding at least of one class because of the abilities they bring to the raid.

It's fairly common to trade one class for another to get a missing raid buff. Slightly less so to request a class from your guild for its raid cooldowns. Very common to only pug certain classes for both reasons.

For pure DPS concerns, there are far, far better choices than Monks. Mages and Death Knights are in the same place as Monks as far as lacking raid utility. They make up for it by obliterating us in WoL. Warlocks and Shaman have raid utility strong enough to bring one just to have one. An Enhancement Shaman will leave a Windwalker in the dust and then drop a raid healing cooldown without any DPS loss whatsoever.

they are a slightly more complicated class to play with two buffs to keep up - tiger power and strikes - and while they may lack in big boom AoE they make up for it with consistent spammable AoE that can be improved with a talent. WWalkers play smoothly, have a rather interesting priority rotation and have excellent mobility.

I pretty much agree with all this, except the (I assume) mistake of calling tigereye brew "tiger strikes", but Hunters, Frost DKs, Elemental Shamans and Frost/Fire Mages can usually do far, far better AOE with the same equivalent stats. We are in the top tier of that though and it's a really nice place to be on trash and bosses like Windlord.

So rather than asking for a unique buff to justify your raid spot you're better off fine tuning your priorities and buff uptimes and tailoring to each fight to play to your strengths.

And then get seated because one of those stronger DPS classes wants your spot or a weaker one that has a raid cooldown (assuming they have a decent reputation to be trusted to know their class) comes along on a night where there's an enrage or healing issue.

Soothing Mist:"Healing them for a minor amount every 0.5 sec, until you take any other action."Jade Serpent Statue: "The statue will also begin casting Soothing Mist on your target. healing for 50% as much as yours. " [What's half of minor?]
"Statue casts Soothing Mist at a nearby ally for toddler healing."

Blizzard has been pretty darn explicit about their "bring the player, not the class" way of thinking and for the most part they've achieved that. At the highest levels of play I've not heard of monks being sat or told they'd have to be sat and no class is a huge outlier in DPS that people are stacking them - though part of that has to do with the drop in 25-man raiding - and neither are people stacking specific classes or demanding at least of one class because of the abilities they bring to the raid.

What Monks deliver is strong consistent DPS, they are a slightly more complicated class to play with two buffs to keep up - tiger power and strikes - and while they may lack in big boom AoE they make up for it with consistent spammable AoE that can be improved with a talent. WWalkers play smoothly, have a rather interesting priority rotation and have excellent mobility.

If you think that class differences don't exist anymore (in fact they're far more prevalent than even during WotLK) or that any Windwalker would every spec into Rushing Jade Wind for any raid fight this tier, then you simply don't know what you're talking about. I outlined the specific differences, most of which did not exist until MoP (Skull Banner, Stormlash, hybrid healing cooldowns actually being good, Gorefiend's Grasp, just to name a few). Windwalkers bring average, possibly slightly above average, DPS, but absolutely nothing else.

Classes do need to bring something specific to justify their raid spot now, they didn't used to in Cataclysm or WotLK because they didn't have class-wide talent choices that could be tailored to each specific fight to provide the best kind of utility. Monk utility is tied to the specs rather than being in the talents, and Windwalker didn't get any of that utility. Yes, if you're proven better than someone else then you're probably fine, but the Monk shouldn't have to lose out against any other DPS consideration when they're even just because they don't have something useful any every other spec in the game does.

or that any Windwalker would every spec into Rushing Jade Wind for any raid fight this tier, then you simply don't know what you're talking about.

Kind of have to disagree with this bit. We were having issues with adds breaking out on Windlord and just in case I switched to RJW as I was on "constant AOE duty." 200k crits with an aoe ability is friggin stupid good. I honestly don't think Xuen beats that on this boss because of how long the AOE phase is. Other than that, god no, Kitty all the way.

Soothing Mist:"Healing them for a minor amount every 0.5 sec, until you take any other action."Jade Serpent Statue: "The statue will also begin casting Soothing Mist on your target. healing for 50% as much as yours. " [What's half of minor?]
"Statue casts Soothing Mist at a nearby ally for toddler healing."

Kind of have to disagree with this bit. We were having issues with adds breaking out on Windlord and just in case I switched to RJW as I was on "constant AOE duty." 200k crits with an aoe ability is friggin stupid good. I honestly don't think Xuen beats that on this boss because of how long the AOE phase is. Other than that, god no, Kitty all the way.

On normal Wind Lord maybe, I try it every couple of weeks and my DPS always ends up roughly the same at the end, it's always important to note that Xuen also cleaves so he does a lot of damage too. The damage that you gain in the add phase is lost when you get on the boss and don't have Xuen, either way it's pretty much even, but that's the only fight where it even is in the same ballpark. As a side note, Xuen is vastly superior on Heroic because the availability of a 30 second damage cooldown far outweighs any AoE talent because Recklessness becomes 600% damage taken.

The point holds though, no one is inviting Monks to their raid because of their AoE, because it's simply not used on any fight except Wind Lord as Monks only pull ahead when the AoE phase lasts longer than around 15 seconds AND when there aren't more than 10 targets to AoE (which causes any DoT aoe spec to pull way ahead). Of course, it would be nice if our only major single-target cooldown didn't share a talent with our only AoE damage boost....

If you think that class differences don't exist anymore (in fact they're far more prevalent than even during WotLK) or that any Windwalker would every spec into Rushing Jade Wind for any raid fight this tier, then you simply don't know what you're talking about. I outlined the specific differences, most of which did not exist until MoP (Skull Banner, Stormlash, hybrid healing cooldowns actually being good, Gorefiend's Grasp, just to name a few). Windwalkers bring average, possibly slightly above average, DPS, but absolutely nothing else.

OK, hold on there. I never said that the classes weren't different, just that many times the days of requiring a class for a specific unique buff are well past. WindWalker kind of touched on it better by simply saying that when guilds PuG someone in they are often looking for something specific - whether it be a buff or more often than not someone they won't have to compete with for loot.

Now if you're bleeding edge competitive progression raiders you'll definitely be sat out for one fight or another to make it easier. That's part of the name of the game as far as high-level progression goes. It's just how things work and beyond that too as monks are NOT in the same boat as DKs were when LK launched and just OP as hell there's not going to be people willing to take as much of a risk on them and many dps monks are still figuring out the totality of the utility they bring. Even things just as simple as being willing to back off from DPS and lay down some healing spheres to help things out.

Classes do need to bring something specific to justify their raid spot now, they didn't used to in Cataclysm or WotLK because they didn't have class-wide talent choices that could be tailored to each specific fight to provide the best kind of utility. Monk utility is tied to the specs rather than being in the talents, and Windwalker didn't get any of that utility. Yes, if you're proven better than someone else then you're probably fine, but the Monk shouldn't have to lose out against any other DPS consideration when they're even just because they don't have something useful any every other spec in the game does.

There's a HUGE difference between justifying your spot and just receiving it because of a unique buff or form of utility and speaking as someone with a paladin main you don't want to be tied to your burst potential. Especially since much of the time you're learning the fights to cater to your burst potential. Or you could be like warriors where you're only really at your best stacking cooldowns in the last 20%.

I think you're underestimating the number of players out there that would be very happy to give up a lot of their utility to gain more DPS talents - especially in the last tier. Go to the DK forums and ask them if gargoyle suddenly became talented in the last tier if people would choose it or gorefiend's grasp. Or if DPS warriors would be willing to give up their personal CD of Shield Wall in exchange for an extra enrage.

Sorry you might be sat on competitive progression content, but the fact is that Blizz doesn't balance classes using that content. They have every single raid ID and composition showing up in database files that list what classes are in the raids and when people have problems. I'm not saying monks are perfect but if they are unsatisfied we can expect some buffs.

Though I'd probably be expecting a buff to burst to show up because of PvP in the season after next. This next season is going to be turning down burst so we probably can't expect any dramatic buffs that would increase our on-demand dps until they feeling that burst vs healing is in a balanced spot.

Oh and with regards to AoE. You're also forgetting "Hide!" on Lei Shi. SCK is amazing as a great low-cost on demand AoE.

Lol WW Healing Spheres being utility when every single other hybrid class has better off heals, and the notion that specs that have burst somehow don't have the same or more sustained DPS as Windwalker, which doesn't.

You can sugar-coat it or stay in denial as long as you want, constantly saying that it doesn't matter if you bring the same things everyone else does, but everyone else brings it better or something extra. You'd be wrong in saying that it doesn't matter, but that's okay, you're allowed to be wrong if you want to. If I had to choose between a Windwalker or an exactly equal skilled and geared any other DPS spec, I wouldn't take the Windwalker because comparing Burst vs Cleave vs Utility vs Raid Cooldowns vs Nothing, "Nothing" will never, ever win.

Lol WW Healing Spheres being utility when every single other hybrid class has better off heals, and the notion that specs that have burst somehow don't have the same or more sustained DPS as Windwalker, which doesn't.

Yeah. Try playing a paladin sometime and tell me just how great they are without wings and guardian up.

You can sugar-coat it or stay in denial as long as you want, constantly saying that it doesn't matter if you bring the same things everyone else does, but everyone else brings it better or something extra.

Dude, I'm not in denial. I just think that your particular scope of play is limited. You're concerned with totally mixing/maxing. I'm concerned with having fun and more people synergy over class synergy.

You'd be wrong in saying that it doesn't matter, but that's okay, you're allowed to be wrong if you want to.

Really? You're really going to play that card?

If I had to choose between a Windwalker or an exactly equal skilled and geared any other DPS spec, I wouldn't take the Windwalker because comparing Burst vs Cleave vs Utility vs Raid Cooldowns vs Nothing, "Nothing" will never, ever win.

And that would be your choice and it's a perfectly viable one to do. But now in order to know that both are equally skilled you'd have played with them both. So with that in mind who would I take? The one I have more fun with and the one I would have to compete with less for gear - I'm a greedy bastard.

You're playing a weighing game between the classes of "these have this, I have that, no one will take me." All while leaving out the human factor almost completely and applying standards to average play that are quite frankly unrealistic.

You're totally right that if you're talking about just PUG DPS then most folks looking for a fill in trade or from their friend's list then what they'll do is typically start with someone that brings a unique buff that the raid doesn't have - normally warp/BL/Hero - then highest DPS possible and then just work their way down until they find someone. But if that's what you're getting into raids from you either need your guild to start improving and showing up for raid nights, to start being a more charming individual so folks will actually friend and invite you because you're fun to play with or just hit LFR and relax.

I'm not saying Monks couldn't use more burst, what I am saying is that the class is new enough that a lot of balancing is still to come and I'd prefer to maintain steady DPS over burst if it means that we'd be defined by our burst. Being a class defined mostly by your CDs is a sucky place to be. Every time they nerf a proc for mages it's like the end of the world, same for warriors and if there's even mention of a nerf to wings for paladin - even with a buff to some attacks - and there are threats of unsubbing as they drown in a tear-filled room.